Locked out of school for being a girl in Afghanistan

By Jerry L | 29 Oct 2025

More than four years ago, the Taliban banned girls from attending secondary school. This generation of Afghan women knows the opportunities they are being denied.

"I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own," Audre Lorde

My grandmother was a midwife, my grandpa was an architect.

Their education saved their lives, and my own.

My maternal grandparents fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1982. They had the means to pay a people smuggler to help them escape and their lives changed overnight. My mum left on the back of a donkey accompanied by rockets and hovering helicopters.

My father left in 1981 when he was seven years old. His father was a journalist who had fled the Communist regime in 1979 in fear of his life, and he arranged for his son to be smuggled into Pakistan where he would meet him. His mother remained in Afghanistan to look after his siblings, while the young boy posed as a stranger's son. He hid in the back of a truck for two days with little food or water.

Being captured meant certain death.

I absorbed my family's stories as if they were bedtime ones. But these weren't fiction, they were facts. Education was not just their escape route, but their entry ticket into Australia, as their sponsorship visas came from those they knew through their work.

Then in August 2021, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan

It's scary to imagine where I'd be now if my family didn't leave the country. What would my reality be?

The likelihood is I'd be living under a regime that would have silenced my voice before I could speak up.

A 'struggle' others wish for

I've grown up in the quiet Sydney suburb of Castle Hill, where most people aren't thinking about the Taliban or the human rights they take for granted.

I've had books, school uniforms and excursions. Whenever I complained about early mornings or exams, I would be reminded of the journey my parents had to get an education.

"Don't take it for granted. This is 'struggle' someone else wishes for," my mum would say, drilling this into me from a young age.

When the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, all the rights women fought for during the 20 years of US intervention fell apart.

Both my mother and grandmother watched in shock, overwhelmed by sadness that the progress women had made since they'd left had been snatched away.